Your search engine page rank is generally determined by the optimization of the web page and the amount of inbound links with the appropriate keywords. The page optimization counts towards 25% of the page rank, with inbound link and other sources counting as the remaining 75%.

Behind the scenes of every page on every website is html. Google and the other search engines read this information and use it to work out what information is actually on the page, you can help the search engines by changing the html to something the search engines better understand.

Here are the 5 Quick tip to improve your page rank, using page optimization.

1. Page Title –

This is one of the most important parts of your page but it is often over looked. You page title should be relevant to the product of service, it should be phrased in the same way people search your product or service. For example “Essex Business & Trade Directory” Keep it short and to the point.

You can edit your page title using your favorite html editor, the title can normally be edited in the top of the page view otherwise edit this Tag within the HTML itself.

<TITLE>Your page title goes in here</TITLE>

2. Page Description –

This is the short piece of text directly under the page title that people see when using search engines. This text needs to be to the point & attention grabbing, people will see this only for a second before looking at the next one in the search list. Google and the others use this information to understand the content of the page.

Here is a good example of a page description, html has also been included

<meta name=”description” content=”The Essex Business Directory, find any trade or company in Essex”>

3. Keywords -

Are the words that people most often use to find or describe your site, they are found within the HTML head of the page and also withing the page content or text. Edit the Keyword Tag to include common words and phrases, a phrase is better than lots of single keywords. For example

<meta name=”keywords” content=”Essex Business Directory, Essex Search, Essex Tradesmen”> rather than

<meta name=”keywords” content=”Essex, business, directory, search, tradesmen, trade”>

Also include variations of these keywords directly in the text (content) or your website.

4. Heading Tag -

The Heading html tag is used to define a Title for your page content, so where some websites have welcome to blahblah.com it could be better used to say what the page is about and once again helps the search engines.

Example with html <h1>Essex Business Directory</h1> The the text content would continue from here. You can also use sub headings H2, H3, H4 but normally not more than 3 are used depending on the page content.

5. Alt Tags

Many websites have lots of pretty images, these are good for people but are bad for search engines. Search engines cannot see what the picture contains, is it a car, teapot, house ? The search engine has no idea and this can effect your page rank. By using the Alt tag for each image on your website you can tell the seach engine what the image is. As before describe the image in a manner that will also tap into keywords or phrases. Example with html

<IMG SRC=”images/catagory_banner3.jpg” ALT=”Essex Directory Banner”>

I hope this helps some of you improve your page ranks, feel free to leave comments or questions and I’ll respond if I can.

Lee